Next Hula-hoop, Or Next Edsel?

Glitches In The Wings: Microsoft's Windows 95 May Fall Short Of Hype

August 20, 1995|By James Coates, Tribune Computer Writer.

REDMOND, Wash. — Thursday is "Launch Day" for a high-tech spectacular that has replaced manned space missions in the hearts and minds of millions of technologically avid Americans-the advent of a new personal computer operating system, Windows 95.

"Christmas will come twice in 1995, first on Aug. 24," said Ed Bellega, Microsoft Corp.'s director of retail strategies, underscoring projections by the leading industry research group, Dataquest Inc., that Microsoft could sell 30 million copies of the product in the first year.

FOR THE RECORD - Additional material published Aug. 22, 1995:Corrections and clarifications.A graphic in the Sunday Business Section incorrectly stated the capacity needed to run Microsoft Corp's Windows 95. Outside evaluators of the system believe a 486DX processor with 8 megabytes of RAM is essential and that best results will be achieved with a Pentium-based processor with 16 megabytes of RAM. The Tribune regrets the error.

Within days of Bellega's "first" Christmas, America will know if the $90 software, boxed in blue-sky-and-puffy-white-clouds artwork, will become a flop big enough to outdo Ford Motor Co.'s Edsel, or the hottest thing since the Hula-Hoop.

Most today are betting on the Hula-Hoop scenario, but most also bet on the Edsel in 1957 when it made its debut and quickly became a lasting symbol of marketing disasters.

The outcome vexes a community far wider than Bill Gates' immense software company. For the computer industry and the retail marketplace, the product launch is expected to bring a bonanza of business as people and companies rush to buy new software and hardware to upgrade their computers to use the new system.

But a spate of last-minute glitches in Windows 95 threatens to darken Microsoft's planned show of glory.

For example, Roger Weed, a group manager for the Windows 95 software writers, acknowledged in an interview that installing the operating system on computers with Internet World Wide Web access through CompuServe and the highly popular Netscape Explorer will render the machines incapable of connecting to the Web.

While as many as 10 million people are expected to buy Windows 95 in the next several weeks, only 500,000 of these customers will be allowed to hook up to the controversial on-line service included in the new operating system, Microsoft Network, for the next "sever-

al months," said George Meng, lead product manager for Network.

Meng acknowledged that virtually all the 500,000 openings already have been filled.

Other problems surfaced when the company tested the operating system on nearly 2,500 programs and found errors with nearly 500 of them. Most notably, Windows 95 prevents people from using Quicken 4.0, the leading personal finance software package.

Another flap has erupted over whether Microsoft is prying into what every customer who installs Windows 95 has on their hard drives.

Microsoft has been under fire from federal regulators who are investigating whether including access to the Microsoft Network in the operating system violates antitrust laws. In Windows 95, Microsoft Network is built into the essential code that runs computers, while competitors America Online, CompuServe and Prodigy must sell separate software.

To set the scene for the coming reckoning, Gates, Microsoft's rock-star-famous chief executive, will take to a stage now being erected here on at the company's sprawling corporate grounds in Seattle's suburbs to talk operating systems to people across the planet over a global satellite video feed.

Fueled by excitement about the coming Information Age-with the accompanying multimedia mergers and exploding profits in Wall Street technology stocks-Windows 95 has seeped into American popular culture right along with O.J. Simpson's trial and Newt Gingrich's political revolution.

Cartoonist Garry Trudeau has devoted a full week of Doonesbury to Windows 95, treating the operating system as though it were a comic strip character.

The Chicago Tribune's Mike Royko even has his character Slats Grobnik talking about Windows 95.

On cable TV's QVC home-shopping channel, supersalesman Steve Bryant sold 20,000 copies of Windows 95, sight unseen, to people who paid one month ahead of Launch Day for the privilege of sending Microsoft money in advance.

"I've never sold a product that had people more excited than when we were taking orders for Windows 95 over the phones," said Bryant. "It is just an awesome product."

Thus, Gates can expect an avidly attentive audience. Among them:

- Millions of computer-users champing at their bits and bytes for a look at how the cyber sea change will sweep over their desktops when Windows 95 is installed.

- Business people as diverse as those at Kelly Services Inc., who already have trained their temps to operate Windows 95, and retailers who range in size from individual grocery stores to the Chicago-based Elek-Tek computer store chain.

With ultra-high-fidelity multimedia computers blasting theme music and spectacular computer-generated graphics, Gates will kick off a $100 million advertising blitz for what already stands as the most blitzed new product since the New Coke debacle of 1985.

In Chicago, the show will be downloaded to waiting computers and huge video screens at Navy Pier, for an invitation-only crowd of the city's computer elite.